I work under the premise that a customer may have a rough idea about what they want, but they really don’t know exactly what they want until they see something and have a chance to react to it. This is not a business like — like what? In what situation do you really know exactly what you want? I suspect very little in life. That is why grocery stores have 6 brands of the same thing, and tax accountants give opinions, and why in general there are so many choices in life. The same goes for this business.

Rather, I find that if I listen to someone’s problem and then bring in my experience in generating solutions, I can come up with a first solution which will head us in the right direction. I can short circuit many blind alleys by applying my experience and avoiding approaches that have failed in the past.

I find that frequent interactions with the customer result in fewer surprises. I find that most people only understand the issues of a problem when given several alternative solutions. This successive refinement approach to solutions has worked well for me over the years.

Finally, I try to develop solutions using the most appropriate technology: no more, no less. Many times simple technologies result in better solutions than complex or the cutting edge technologies. I discovered this after many years of being far out on the technology curve: the solutions that worked the best over time were the simple ones.